Winnipeg City Transit/Rapid Transit

[esquire]

Having taken it many times in the past, I'd say that Selkirk is well served by fairly frequent 16 service that gets people downtown in a hurry... North Main is not subject to the kinds of traffic jams that plague commuting routes heading into the south of the city, it usually flows well.

Any shortcomings of the Selkirk strip are not as a result of inadequate transit service.

[CoryB]

Legitimately as an east-west line between Main and Route 90 Selkirk Ave definitely has some solid potential as a future rapid transit right of way in northwest Winnipeg. The width of the existing right of way could be reconfigured to support both rapid transit and private vehicle use. Also as others have noted it already has a fairly high transit frequency.

The bigger question is how do you connect up the existing Blue line to a potential northwest segment.

[esquire]

NW RT and improved Selkirk Avenue service are two different things IMO. If you want a service to speed people into the NW suburbs, it would make sense to avoid Selkirk. Any on-street service on Selkirk will be inherently slow regardless of the mode.

[esquire]

Interesting Saskatoon transit barn proposal in the Canadian proposals thread. Made me wonder what the future has in store for the North Main transit barn and whether it could be redeveloped into something like this. It feels like that St. John's/West K area seldom gets any interesting new developments with an urban focus (as opposed to things like strip malls and janky low-end apartments). Rather than demolishing the transit barn, I wonder if a creative redevelopment like this could invigorate the area?

Originally Posted by Echoes

Saskatoon's former transit facility (dating back over 100 years to the start of our streetcar system) has been sitting empty since Transit relocated a few years ago. It's located in a forlorn post-industrial area of Caswell Hill, a central neighbourhood immediately west of Downtown.

Here's the facility and area today: https://www.google.ca/maps/@52.13235...8192?entry=ttu

After a number of years of work one of the Transit sites is proposed to be redeveloped into a mixed-use creative hub including retail, office, gallery/studio space, restaurant, as well as future phase multi-unit residential. Somewhat reminiscent of Toronto's Wychwood Barns.


https://pub-saskatoon.escribemeeting...ab=attachments



https://www.caswellbusbarns.ca/

[thebasketballgeek]

Use the garages as strorefronts and add a massive patio space fronting Main. Consider making it a rapid transit station while you’re at it and slap a few floors of residential on top. There’s more then enough space for parking at the back too.

I might be dreaming but that could serve as a catalyst for the area.

[bomberjet]

The North Main barn isn't the most appealing building. I could see it declared surplus, put for sale and re-developed into condos. Because that's what makes developers money these days.

[Biff]

I can't see any outcome for the old transit garage on Main other than demolition.

[pegster]

Don't know if this has been brought up before, but at the city's CentrePlan2050 information session at the Hydro building a few weeks ago, the guy there from Winnipeg Transit (who was great to talk to) said, in no uncertain terms, that the full route redesign in line with the Transit Master Plan will be implemented in "two to three years", and that it is likely to happen either all at once or in at most a couple of phases. Of course, this doesn't involve much new infrastructure yet, but I though it was good to hear.

[CoryB]

Learned another "inconvenient truth" about LRT this past weekend. When the line needs planned annual maintenance it shuts down. When a BRT route needs maintenance the vehicles just take a diversion onto other streets.

[thebasketballgeek]

^With how ridiculous LRT costs are these days in North America, I’ll be glad to stick with BRT which is built on budget and in time.

I keep flip flopping on this topic, but if we want rail it should be grade separated and high capacity. If only the CNR main line was available you could get a nice SW/NE corridor from the Outlet to Transcona via Union Station.

[CoryB]

^^ As I have said many times there is no reason BRT cannot be grade separated or given "non-stop" priority for at grade crossings similar to at-grade heavy rail. Also the current articulated buses do more to address current to medium term transit needs in Winnipeg. We need to increase frequency of transit service more than we need to increase point in time capacity, which is the only true advantage of LRT over BRT.

As was done with the first transitway by all means take steps in the design to allow for a possible change to LRT at some future point but do not stop any forward progress on BRT to do yet another study on if we should do LRT tomorrow.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by CoryB

^^ As I have said many times there is no reason BRT cannot be grade separated or given "non-stop" priority for at grade crossings similar to at-grade heavy rail. Also the current articulated buses do more to address current to medium term transit needs in Winnipeg. We need to increase frequency of transit service more than we need to increase point in time capacity, which is the only true advantage of LRT over BRT.

As was done with the first transitway by all means take steps in the design to allow for a possible change to LRT at some future point but do not stop any forward progress on BRT to do yet another study on if we should do LRT tomorrow.

What you are saying is true, but at the same time it illustrates some of the weaknesses inherent to the BRT model. There are just so many opportunities to cut costs on BRT, to the point where it starts to resemble a normal on-street bus service more than anything else.

You can cut LRT too, Edmonton's line to NAIT is an example of accountant-driven engineering that compromises the effectiveness and usefulness of the route. But with LRT you can only go so far. With BRT, as we are seeing with the proposals for the rose line heading east, you can basically propose not much more than a bus lane on existing streets and politicians will call it BRT with a straight face.

A proper BRT route would have grade separations, an exclusive ROW, enclosed stations, prepaid boarding zones, etc., but it is so easy to chip away at it in the name of squeezing budgets.

[optimusREIM]

Originally Posted by esquire

What you are saying is true, but at the same time it illustrates some of the weaknesses inherent to the BRT model. There are just so many opportunities to cut costs on BRT, to the point where it starts to resemble a normal on-street bus service more than anything else.

You can cut LRT too, Edmonton's line to NAIT is an example of accountant-driven engineering that compromises the effectiveness and usefulness of the route. But with LRT you can only go so far. With BRT, as we are seeing with the proposals for the rose line heading east, you can basically propose not much more than a bus lane on existing streets and politicians will call it BRT with a straight face.

A proper BRT route would have grade separations, an exclusive ROW, enclosed stations, prepaid boarding zones, etc., but it is so easy to chip away at it in the name of squeezing budgets.

Classic! Value engineering always takes its pound of flesh. That to me is the politicians being dishonest when they propose a plan and don’t have the stones to build it to spec…

[thebasketballgeek]

Originally Posted by esquire

A proper BRT route would have grade separations, an exclusive ROW, enclosed stations, prepaid boarding zones, etc., but it is so easy to chip away at it in the name of squeezing budgets.

Imo you don’t need grade separations for BRT. An exclusive ROW with priority signal will do most of the job at a fraction of the cost. Maybe grade separate very busy intersections like P&M or Regent/Lag for example.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by thebasketballgeek

Imo you don’t need grade separations for BRT. An exclusive ROW with priority signal will do most of the job at a fraction of the cost. Maybe grade separate very busy intersections like P&M or Regent/Lag for example.

You don't "need" a lot of things for BRT as the bar for what constitutes BRT can be as low as you want it to be. But a good BRT system should have things like that. We kind-of, sort-of did it that way on SWBRT with things like a grade separation at McGillivray.

[thebasketballgeek]

Originally Posted by esquire

You don't "need" a lot of things for BRT as the bar for what constitutes BRT can be as low as you want it to be. But a good BRT system should have things like that. We kind-of, sort-of did it that way on SWBRT with things like a grade separation at McGillivray.

Wouldn’t grade separated infrastructure be better serviced by rail transit then? Imo BRT doesn’t provide enough of an ROI to justify full grade separation unless it’s a really busy lines with 5 min headways or less.

That’s why I really wish the city/province can get their hands on the CN main line because it’s already entirely grade separated from the Transcona yards until Shaftesbury. The CPR line would also be pretty nice but redevelopment of the North End rail yard will take decades just to even start so not optimistic on that (yet). Even

I like BRT because we can cut a portion of our wide ass roads like Portage and Main Street for dedicated RT ROW at a pretty cheap price. Although that can also be done with trams.

[esquire]

^ I don't know how the city gets its hands on a busy privately-owned transportation corridor. Besides, the CN mainline ROW is not even that great for transit... it's relatively far from any dense, built up areas. Once you get outside the short strip from Pembina/Jubilee to about Whittier Park, it has mostly lightly used wasteland on one or both sides of the ROW. The best, most promising part of it from a transit perspective, downtown to just behind the Taylor Walmart, already has SWBRT service.

It's interesting, if you ever ride VIA through Winnipeg it gives the impression that Winnipeg is a much smaller city than it is because the CN line uncannily avoids so many built up areas.

[thurmas]

With NDP election more likely i wonder if next year the city has more ambitious transit proposals knowing they have a better chance of fruition with ndp than a pc government?

[audie]

I think the upside of BRT is the ability to implement improvements over time as funding becomes available. There's nothing stopping the city from running service on the full proposed Blue, rose, and orange routes as express busses and throwing up priority signals and queue jumps at the start. I'm not confident on our ability to follow through with dedicated ROWs and grade separations, but there is advantage to not building out BRT as one single megaproject.

The most sensible portion of the CNR line for transit already has the SWBRT running right next to it, so I don't see much of a push to use the remaining lines going forward, they just aren't in dense enough areas

[Biff]

Without dedicated ROWs and grade separations isn't BRT just...a bus system?